"I would veto it and here's why: What I'm proposing is that we give a tax break, that we make sure that taxes don't go up on 98 percent of Americans — 98 percent. But to extend tax breaks for that top 2 percent of wealthiest Americans would cost us a trillion dollars over the next decade," Obama said in an interview with New Orleans' WWL-TV Monday afternoon, one of eight television hits the President did with local reporters (mostly from key battleground states) to promote his position on the tax cuts.

"Now at a time when we're trying to bring down our deficit to give me a tax break or Warren Buffet a tax break that costs a trillion dollars and 80 percent of that would go to people who make a million dollars or more, that would mean that we would have to cut something," he added.